BAYNES, Adam (1622-71), of Knostrop Hall, Leeds, and Holdenby, Northants.

The Bayneses had settled at Knostrop, just outside the corporate limit of Leeds, by the Elizabethan period, but were said to have been associated with the area for many generations.33Thoresby, Ducatis Leodiensis, 100-1. The family does not appear to have risen much above the rank of yeoman during the seventeenth century, and although Baynes was to acquire a substantial landed estate during the 1650s and to marry into a (minor) gentry family, it is significant that the grant of arms he received in 1650 was not confirmed after the Restoration.34Grantees of Arms ed. W.H. Rylands (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 18. Almost nothing is known about his upbringing, and it is consistent with his family’s relatively humble origins that he apparently received no formal higher education. His father, described in a lawsuit as a yeoman, had connections with Leeds’s merchant clothing elite, and Baynes himself was referred to as a merchant in 1650, suggesting that he too had links with the clothing trade.35The Manor and Borough of Leeds, 1425-1662 ed. J.W. Kirby (Thoresby Soc. lvii), 248; Kirby, ‘A Leeds elite: the principal burgesses of the first Leeds corporation’, NH xx. 107; D. Hirst, ‘The fracturing of the Cromwellian alliance: Leeds and Adam Baynes’, EHR cviii. 871. However, the family’s main source of income prior to the civil war was probably coal-mining. Baynes seems to have extended his grandfather’s coal-mining operation at Knostrop and was able to bequeath a ‘considerable colliery’ to his children.36DL4/76/46; PROB11/336, f. 158; Add. 21423, f. 59; Add. 21424, ff. 292, 295, 304; Add. 21425, f. 67; M. W. Beresford, ‘Leeds in 1628: a “Riding Observation” from the city of London’, NH x. 138.

With the outbreak of civil war, Baynes joined the northern parliamentarian army under the command of the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), and by June 1643, at the age of just 20, he was serving as a captain of foot in Fairfax’s own regiment. That autumn, he raised and equipped a troop of horse at a personal cost of £700, and in November he and his men were incorporated into Fairfax’s own regiment of horse.37E121/4/1/30; Add. 21417, f. 3; Add. 21426, f. 19; Jones, ‘War in north’, 369-70. One of Fairfax’s most able and trusted officers, Baynes fought in numerous engagements against the northern royalists, including the battles of Adwalton and Marston Moor.38Add. 21423, f. 188; Add. 21426, f. 19; Jones, ‘War in north’, 409, 411. It was almost certainly while serving in the northern army that he became acquainted with his fellow officer and future patron, Colonel John Lambert*. At some point between 1645 and 1647, Baynes and his troop were incorporated into Lambert’s regiment, where they were to remain for the next ten years. Baynes evidently enjoyed Lambert’s trust, serving as financial agent to his regiment from at least August 1647, when Lambert was appointed commander of the Northern Brigade.39Infra, ‘John Lambert’; Add. 21417, f. 12. Baynes attended almost every recorded meeting of the Northern Brigade’s council of war during the late 1640s, and he and his men fought at the battle of Preston in August 1648.40York Minster Lib. BB53, pp. 1, 33; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke ms LXX, ff. 183-184v.

This was to be Baynes’s last military campaign, for during the winter of 1648-9, Lambert installed him as the brigade’s financial agent in London, where he acted as its principal attorney in the purchase of crown lands using debentures for arrears of army pay. He was involved as agent, trustee or purchaser in the acquisition (mostly for his fellow officers) of lands worth £72,223, and he supervised the purchase of Wimbledon House and several other substantial properties for Lambert. Baynes also purchased a number of estates and fee farm rents for himself from the profits he made buying debentures at heavily discounted rates.41C5/444/70; SP28/288, ff. 6, 11, 28, 46; SP28/289, ff. 76, 77, 78, 82; Add. 21419, f. 338; Add. 21422, ff. 65, 127; Add. 21426, f. 177; Add. 21427, ff. 98, 127; Letters from Roundhead Officers to Captain Adam Baynes ed. J.Y. Akerman, 59-60; H. Reece, The Army in Cromwellian Eng. 1649-60, 63-4; Gentles, ‘Debentures Market’, 251-2. Most of these lands he sold again fairly rapidly, but he retained possession of a major portion of his most notable purchase – the royal manor and park of Holdenby in Northamptonshire, which he bought (apparently in collaboration with Lambert and other northern officers) in 1650 for £22,299.42E121/4/1/30; W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), Baynes mss, B/15; Gentles, ‘Debentures Market’, 251; D. Farr, John Lambert, 96. Properly managed, this estate was worth over £1,000 a year and contained deer, timber and building materials valued at £9,000.43E317/Northants35, ff. 3, 5-9, 11; Add. 21427, f. 101; G. Isham, ‘Adam Baynes of Leeds and Holdenby’, Northants. P. & P. ii. 143. Even prior to his acquisition of Holdenby, Baynes’s ability to realise a handsome personal profit from his property transactions had aroused resentment among his fellow officers. In December 1649, Baynes’s friend Judge-advocate Thomas Margetts* informed him that

a murmuring appeared in some officers as to your particular, judging you to be self ended in making great advantages by your employment, as in return of money, buying debentures etc. It was not spoken out, nor much, but I perceive such a sense lies tacit in most officers’ breasts.44Add. 21418, f. 185.

Baynes’s acquisitive zeal also prompted some of his civilian business associates to accuse him of having ‘an unconscionable desire of lucre and gain’.45C6/153/49; C7/241/91. The godly Yorkshire lawyer John Hewley* thought him ‘a most plundering fellow’.46Burton’s Diary, iv. 467. Baynes was certainly eager to maximise the returns on his newly-acquired assets, reducing Holdenby House to a more manageable size, for example, and selling its fixtures and fittings, timber and stone for £3,500.47Isham, ‘Adam Baynes’, 140; C5/437/7; Farr, Lambert, 96.

Although Baynes’s surviving correspondence is voluminous, it contains very few of his own letters, making it difficult to gain a precise picture of his politics. His appointment by Lambert and his officers to carry down to army headquarters the Northern Brigade’s declaration in support of the army’s Remonstrance of November 1648 strongly suggests that he favoured bringing the king to trial – which can also be inferred from his correspondence.48Add. 21417, ff. 28, 29; Add. 21426, f. 216; York Minster Lib. BB53, pp. 32, 33-40; Clarke Pprs. ii. 70; Farr, Lambert, 69-70; D.P. Massarella, ‘The Politics of the Army 1647-60’ (York Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1977), 165-6. Similarly, references in several of the letters he received in February 1649 in support of the regicide may well constitute evidence that he approved of the trial’s outcome.49Add. 21417, ff. 34-5, 40. Baynes’s attitude towards the Rump, on the other hand, was apparently more equivocal. He attended the council of officers on two occasions during the debates in December 1648 on the Levellers’ blueprint for constitutional reform, the Agreement of the People, and it is possible that he was not entirely averse to its adoption in some form – a notion that many Rumpers vehemently opposed.50Clarke Pprs. ii. 270; B. Taft, ‘Voting lists of the council of officers, Dec. 1648’, BIHR lii. 148. There is evidence that he was favourably disposed towards the Leveller leader John Lilburne, and it may be significant that Margetts felt it necessary to offer Baynes his opinion that the Agreement should not be accepted without much fuller consideration.51Add. 21417, f. 24; Add. 21418, f. 112; CJ vii. 600a. Baynes also seems to have had misgivings about taking the Engagement, particularly in pledging to maintain the government ‘as it is now established’.52Add. 21418, f. 97; Add. 21426, f. 341. He was ‘very earnest and forward’ in taking the army’s side in its quarrel with the House in 1650-1 concerning the court martial of Colonel Algernon Sydney*, the governor of Dover Castle. Writing while on campaign in Scotland, and anxious to maintain good relations between Parliament and the army, Lambert criticised Baynes for his ‘needless zeal’ in defending the jurisdiction of the army in this controversy. Baynes was unrepentant, however, arguing that if junior officers had unfailingly obeyed the ‘immediate’ commands of Parliament and its committees without reference to their superior officers, ‘we had, ere this, been in a sad condition’.53Infra, ‘Algernon Sydney’; Add. 21426, ff. 7, 189; Reece, Army in Cromwellian Eng. 57-9. Several of his correspondents were under the firm impression that he regarded the Rump as self-interested, tyrannical and hostile to the interests of the army and the ‘saints’.54Add. 21417, f. 281v; Add. 21426, f. 341. There are certainly signs that he welcomed the army’s dissolution of the Rump in April 1653.55Add 21422, ff. 53, 61.

As a friend and protégé of Lambert, the architect of the Instrument of Government, Baynes was well placed to profit from the establishment of the protectorate late in 1653. Within a few months of Cromwell’s installation as lord protector, he had been appointed to a commission for ‘preservation’ (i.e. improvement) of the customs, to the first protectoral Army Committee and to a commission for regulating and improving the excise (at a salary of £300 a year) – a body he seems to have headed, until his removal in February 1660.56CUST109/14, f. 19v; Add. 21422, f. 237; Add. 21426, ff. 209, 336; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 316, 425; 1654, pp. 342, 343; 1655, p. 51; A. and O. ii. 851-3, 1417. In the autumn of 1655, the council of state referred the equally lucrative business of managing and granting wine licences to Baynes and his fellow commissioners.57CSP Dom. 1655, p. 403; 1655-6, p. 36; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 233. And the enfranchisement of Leeds under the Instrument offered him the opportunity for political preferment. There was a widespread perception in Leeds that he had been ‘the first wheel which made it a town electable’, and he quickly emerged as the leading contender to represent the borough in the first protectoral Parliament.58Supra, ‘Leeds’; Add. 21422, ff. 248, 296; Add. 21426, f. 97; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 872-4. He was already on familiar terms with many of the town’s leading inhabitants, having acted as their attorney under the Rump, and was said to have possessed a ‘considerable’ estate in the borough.59Add. 21417, f. 46; Add. 21422, f. 68; Add. 21427, ff. 88-9. Nevertheless, the town’s senior municipal office-holders were in two minds at the prospect of electing him their MP.60Add. 21422, fo. 256. They certainly did not discount his experience in the ways of Westminster and his ‘present power in the court’ – in particular his intimacy with Lambert, who had replaced the 3rd Baron Fairfax (Sir Thomas Fairfax*) as the West Riding’s most powerful politician.61Infra, ‘John Lambert’; Add. 21426, f. 97. As one of the town’s leading inhabitants put it, Baynes had been ‘long trained up above in several committees and hath the most eminent acquaintance ... we all know Lieutenant-general Lambert is his great patron. And he strikes with a great hammer!’62Whitaker, Loidis and Elmete, 90. They were also mindful of the influence he wielded in the management of the customs and the excise – and they wrote to him on several occasions in the spring and summer of 1654 assuring him of their support.63Add. 21422, f. 296; Add. 21426, f. 97; Add. 21427, ff. 188, 189. At the same time, however, they were worried that once elected he would support calls from the clothiers of the parish for the reform of the town’s government. Furthermore, they were uneasy about his unorthodox religious views. While continuing to court Baynes, therefore, the municipal leaders opted in secret to back one of their own number, Francis Allanson. But although eager to serve as the town’s MP, Allanson seems to have doubted whether he could offer a serious challenge to Baynes’s interest.64Supra, ‘Leeds’ By early July, Baynes was so confident of success at Leeds that he considered joining Lambert as a candidate in the elections for the West Riding.65Add. 21422, ff. 317, 327, 328. However, his electoral agent informed him that he had left it too late and that ‘without further time of preparation [it] will not do’.66Add. 21422, ff. 328, 342.

Baynes was returned for Leeds on 14 July 1654 – his interest among the generality of the merchants and clothiers holding up despite the last minute defection of most of the senior office-holders, who endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to persuade Allanson to make a contest of it. According to his correspondents, Baynes had been supported by most of the merchants, clothiers and the ‘best of the parish’, while his opponents had been drawn largely from the corporate elite and the clothworkers, or the ‘poorer sort’. But despite their failure to force a poll or double return, Allanson and his faciton petitioned the committee of privileges in August or September, requesting a new election.67Supra, ‘Leeds’. Religious antagonisms played a major part in the political feuding that would follow. Most of the Allanson group were staunch Presbyterians who liked to equate Baynes’s lack of sympathy for ‘high-kirk’ Presbyterianism with ‘disaffection to [godly] religion’ in general. He was denounced by them as an ‘atheist’, a ‘schismatic’ and a profaner of the sabbath.68Add. 21422, ff. 358, 361, 384, 388, 419; Add. 21424, f. 46v; Add. 21426, f. 222; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 877. Whereas most of Baynes’s opponents were members of the ‘new church’ at Leeds – under its fiercely Presbyterian minister Robert Todd – his supporters were drawn largely, it seems, from the ‘west church’, that is, the old parish church, where his friend William Stiles, a ‘non-Scottified’ Presbyterian, was vicar.69Add. 21417, f. 7; Add. 21422, ff. 135, 256, 286, 317, 358, 406, 410, 457; Add. 21424, f. 98; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 873, 877, 881. Intermixed with these religious tensions was the more long-standing dispute over the town’s government. Resentful of the corporation’s drive to regulate the manufacture of cloth within the parish, Leeds’s clothiers wanting this power removed from the municipal elite – either by creating their own regulatory structures, remodelling the corporation, or abolishing it altogether. They looked to Baynes as their champion in this cause and were doubtless pleased when he wrote to the town shortly after his election, urging it to prepare instructions for him at Westminster ‘in relation to your government civil or political’ and for the promotion of the clothing trade. Baynes also asked his supporters in Leeds to collect signatures to a petition endorsing his return, and by early October they had gathered between 700 and 1,000 hands from the most ‘sufficient’ men in the town and borough. Faced with such overwhelming support, which Baynes took care to lay before the committee of privileges, Allanson and his allies decided to accept the olive branch which Baynes had been holding out to them since late July. Early in October they withdrew their petition and formally recognised Baynes as the town’s MP.70Supra, ‘Leeds’.

Baynes (who should not be confused with the Member for Westmorland, Lieutenant Colonel Jeremiah Baines) received just three appointments in the first protectoral Parliament.71CJ vii. 373b, 378b, 380a. His nomination to a committee on 31 October 1654 for considering the petition of Sir William Killigrew† concerning his scheme to drain the Lindsey Level was a deeply self-interested move on Baynes’s part, for both he and Lambert had purchased estates in the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire fens under the Rump and were willing to entertain plans for the drainage and enclosure of the fenlands, even when advanced by former royalists and Caroline ‘projectors’ such as Killigrew.72C5/465/5, 6; Add. 21418, ff. 1, 2, 72; Add. 21422, ff. 80, 125, 131; Add. 21423, f. 134; Add. 21427, ff. 139v-45; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 366; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir William Killigrew’. Killigrew looked to the two men for support at Whitehall against the ‘commoners’ – a group of smaller landowners and tenant farmers opposed to the draining of the fens – and their gentry allies such as Thomas Hall* of Donington.73Add. 21422, ff. 80, 131, 146; Add. 21423, ff. 139, 193; K. Lindley, Fenland Riots, 46, 51. Baynes also seems to have chaired – and certainly reported from – a committee set up on 28 November (and to which Lambert was named first) to prepare a clause concerning the summoning of Parliaments in the bill for declaring and settling the protectoral constitution.74CJ vii. 392b.

In the interval between the summoning of the first and second protectoral Parliaments, Baynes sought to consolidate his position as the most well-connected and influential figure in the West Riding clothing district after Lambert. As one of Baynes’s correspondents commented in August 1655, ‘you are always near the stern of affairs of the commonwealth and much acquainted with the passages and transactions thereof and much interested in those that have the chief agitation therein’.75Add. 21423, f. 117. Even those who had emerged as Baynes’s opponents in the 1654 election looked to him to advance their own and the town’s interests at Whitehall.76Add. 21423, ff. 37, 48, 54, 57, 61, 109, 137; Add. 21424, f. 31; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 878-80. But Baynes’s supporters at Leeds were careful to remind him that that ‘though now they may lick you with a deceitful tongue, yet then [at his election] they bit you cruelly with a venomous one’.77Add. 21424, f. 46v. In the spring of 1656, the Presbyterians launched an attack upon Baynes’s already narrow power-base within the corporation, and by the autumn they had forced the resignation of one of his closest allies among the principal burgesses.78Add. 21424, ff. 46-46v, 68, 81, 85; Add. 21427, f. 250; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 881. Baynes’s friends at Leeds urged him to improve his interest with Lambert in order to protect his local power base, but there was little that either man could do short of securing support at Whitehall for the wholesale remodelling of the corporation.79Add. 21424, f. 46v.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Baynes stood for one of the six West Riding seats, but, like several other candidates closely associated with Lambert, he was defeated by the strength of ‘the combination at York [Castle]’ against ‘swordsmen’. Three of the successful candidates – Henry Arthington, John Stanhope and Henry Tempest – were allies of Leeds’s Presbyterian office-holders, and it was probably no coincidence that they were among Members those excluded from the House as enemies of the protectorate. All three were on close terms with Lambert’s main political rival in the West Riding, Lord Fairfax.80Supra, ‘Yorkshire’; Add. 21424, f. 88. Baynes also stood for re-election at Leeds in 1656, where this time his candidacy was openly opposed by the senior office-holders, who once again backed Allanson for the seat. The election was held on 20 August, and although Baynes – drawing support from the parish as well as the town – received over four times as many votes as Allanson, the alderman (or mayor) declared for Allanson and returned him in the name of the town proper. Baynes’s supporters returned their own indenture and petitioned the committee of privileges against the alderman’s ‘unequal judgment’.81Supra, ‘Leeds’; Add. 21426, f. 268. In an effort to confirm his election, Allanson attended Parliament in person, but it was Baynes who was reported to be sitting in the House by the end of September.82Add. 21424, f. 69. A week later, the Leeds Presbyterians were hailing Allanson as a ‘state martyr’, which suggests that his return had been rejected – although given the apparent absence of any official ruling to this effect, it is possible that rather than suffer a judgment against them at Westminster, Allanson’s supporters had withdrawn their indenture and whatever case they had presented to the committee of privileges (this would perhaps explain how Allanson was able to revive his challenge to Baynes at the beginning of the second session, early in 1658).83Add. 21424, ff. 69, 270, 272.

With the corporation in no mood to compromise after the election, Baynes set about gathering support in Leeds and at Whitehall for remodelling the town’s government. In December 1657, he and his allies petitioned the council of state for a new charter of incorporation. But although this petition referred to the members of this new corporation being ‘indifferently chosen’, Baynes and his confidants spent most of December selecting their ideal candidates for office – prominent among them being Lambert, Baynes himself and John Hewley. While Baynes and his faction looked principally to Lambert to further their cause, the corporation pinned its hopes on leading members of the Presbyterian interest, including the town recorder’s son John Clayton* – who was gentleman usher to the protector’s wife – Stanhope, Tempest, Sir Edward Rodes* and Tempest Milner, the sheriff of London. However, the corporation’s biggest coup was in securing the favour of Sir Thomas Widdrington*, the Speaker in the second protectoral Parliament. Widdrington was an influential figure at Whitehall, but more importantly he was able to engage the support of his brother-in-law, Lord Fairfax. In mid-January 1657, with the draft of a new charter ready for approval, Fairfax testified to the council as to the corporation’s good services and, at a stroke, the Baynes faction’s proposals to remodel the town’s government were rendered ‘null and void’.84Supra, ‘Leeds’; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 882-3, 885-6, 888.

Baynes was apparently one of the more active and vocal Members of the second protectoral Parliament, receiving 30 committee appointments, acting as teller on seven occasions and making numerous contributions to debate.85CJ vii. 476a, 490a, 491b, 503b, 534b, 552b, 557b. Although he was apparently assiduous in serving the interests of his constituents, particularly when it came to advancing the cloth trade, much of his time at Westminster was taken up with business relating to the management and improvement of the public revenue, particularly in relation to the army and the war with Spain.86Add. 21424, f. 89; Burton’s Diary, i. 82, 94, 161, 179, 180, 181, 188, 211, 213, 214, 215, 245, 267, 292, 293-4, 295, 311, 320, 325-6, 328, 329, 339, 347-8; ii. 165, 179, 193, 208, 209, 211, 213, 216, 233-4, 240, 254, 255, 272, 372; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 252. D.D. Coffman, ‘The Fiscal Revolution of the Interregnum: Excise Taxation in the British Isles, 1643-63’ (London Univ. PhD thesis, 2008), 206. He was named to several committees concerning the state’s finances and was a leading figure on a committee of the Whole to draft a new customs bill.87CJ vii. 440a, 440b, 444a, 445b, 453b, 543a, 558a, 559a, 559b. He was also named first to a committee set up on 19 June 1657 for stating the public debt.88CJ vii. 563a. Money must be secured to pay the armed forces, he reminded the House at one point, and he was very much in favour of making the cavaliers bear as much of the financial burden as possible.89Burton’s Diary, i. 294. Thus on 23 December 1656, he joined Lambert and other Yorkshire Cromwellians in supporting a petition from the ‘well-affected’ of the North Riding requesting the abatement of assessments and the excise and proposing that all the burden of maintaining the army be laid upon the royalists, ‘that the old army may be encouraged and the new charges laid aside’. They further requested that no delinquent should bear civil or military office, ‘and that they be especially purged out of the House’.90CJ vii. 473; Burton’s Diary, i. 208-9.

Baynes, like Lambert, saw the debate in December 1656 on the punishment of the Quaker evangelist and alleged blasphemer James Naylor as a test of the Instrument of Government’s effectiveness in preventing the ‘orthodox’ mainstream using parliamentary authority to exercise an unlimited judicial power or set limits upon liberty of conscience.91Infra, ‘John Lambert’; Farr, Lambert, 180-1; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 183-4. On several occasions that month, Baynes urged leniency towards Naylor, or at least that he be given a fair trial.92Burton’s Diary, i. 44, 59, 89, 220, 248. At one point he implied that technically Naylor had committed no crime: ‘for the Instrument of Government says all shall be protected that profess faith in Jesus Christ, which I suppose this man does’.93Burton’s Diary, i. 59. On 27 December, Baynes and Colonel Philip Jones were tellers in favour of a motion for respiting the further punishment of Naylor – losing the division to Richard Lucy and Baynham Throckmorton by a substantial margin.94CJ vii. 476a. Naylor, a Yorkshireman and former quartermaster in Lambert’s own troop of horses, was well known to Baynes, as were several other Quaker officers. In fact, it is clear that Baynes was sympathetic to the Quakers generally; indeed, he repeatedly spoke in their defence at Westminster.95SP18/102/50, f. 107; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 64; Burton’s Diary, i. 23, 172; iv. 338, 442; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 258-9; Farr, Lambert, 172-3; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 877. Several of his correspondents were Quakers and from their letters it is clear that they regarded him as receptive to ‘Truth’ and ‘loving’ to Friends.96Add. 21417, f. 281v; Add. 21422, ff. 165, 190, 517, 524; Add. 21423, ff. 4, 51, 58, 104; Add. 21424, ff. 285, 293, 300, 524; Add. 21426, f. 222. He certainly seems to have shared the Quakers’ disdain for the professional, tithe-maintained ministry. He had none of his 16 children baptised in church, and he angered his brother-in-law by advising him that if he intended ‘to live off the sweat of other men’s brows’ then he should become a physician rather than a minister

as though sincere teachers and ministers of the Gospel...did no good for what they enjoyed. I confess it is harsh and unsavoury speech to me … if they [ministers] have no maintenance how should they live? Then you will say they should labour, which they do labour ... then you say oftentimes [that] ministers, so-called, swim in pleasures …97Add. 21418, ff. 327-327v.

Baynes’s disdain for the ministry and the tenets and practices of formal religion, which he denounced frequently and ‘offensively’, led some contemporaries to regard him as godless and atheistical (ungodly) – a view endorsed by most modern authorities.98Farr, Lambert, 169, 172. Yet he seems to have shared many of the traditional concerns of the godly, such as the suppression of ale-houses and the abolition of Christmas, and he can be labelled a radical puritan with greater confidence than can the ecumenical and undoctrinaire Lambert.99Infra, ‘John Lambert’; Add. 21422, f. 230; Burton’s Diary, i. 192.

Baynes and Lambert were among those of the army interest at Westminster who opposed to the revised protectoral constition the Humble Petition and Advice, and in particular the offer of the crown to Cromwell.100Add. 21424, ff. 216, 224-224v; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 205; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 110; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 459, 467. ‘I am sure I meet not with an honest, true lover to my Lord Protector in the West Riding’, one of his friends informed him, ‘but rather wish my Lord Protector would refuse the title [of king] ... our common adversaries rejoice much at this endeavoured change, and the army friends are punctually against it’.101Add. 21424, f. 225. Following Cromwell’s rejection of the crown for a second time, Baynes was named to a committee to consider how the title of lord protector in the Humble Petition and Advice should be ‘bounded, limited and circumstantiated’ (19 May 1657).102CJ vii. 535a. A week later, one of his correspondents congratulated him ‘that your first stiff motion in Parliament takes effect so far that we have the protector in that title tacked up to the new government, to which all the true state’s friends rejoice’.103Add. 21424, f. 239. Following Lambert’s dismissal by Cromwell in July 1657 for disaffection to the new constitution, Baynes was either cashiered from the army or felt obliged to resign his commission. In August, he was removed from the West Riding magistracy, although he retained his place on the Northamptonshire bench, of which he was an active member.104C231/6, p. 374; E113/7, pt. 2; Add. 21425, f. 62; W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/2/15; Northants. Q. Sess. Recs. ed. J. Wake, 140, 154, 155, 187. And by February 1658 he had also lost his place on the Army Committee.105CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 76, 280, 282; An Order and Declaration of His Highness the Lord Protector (1658), 3 (E.1073.4); Whitaker, Loidis and Elmete, 92. His and Lambert’s fall from power left him exposed both at Westminster and Leeds and almost certainly prompted Allanson’s decision to revive his challenge to Baynes’s return.106Add. 21424, ff. 269, 270. On 1 February, Baynes was obliged to withdraw from the House following a resolution that no Member elected on a double return should continue to sit until the committee of privileges had determined his case.107Burton’s Diary, ii. 405-6; CJ vii. 590b. Three days later Parliament was dissolved.

Leeds lost its parliamentary seat in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, and Baynes was returned instead for the Westmorland constituency of Appleby. He was elected on the interest of the owner of Appleby Castle, Anne, Dowager Countess of Pembroke, whose patronage had been secured by his friend and kinsman Richard Clapham – the countess’s steward in Westmorland.108Supra, ‘Appleby’; infra, ‘Christopher Clapham’; Add. 21425, ff. 18, 127. Baynes received only eight committee appointments in this Parliament and was probably far more active and outspoken on the floor of the House than he was in committee.109CJ vii. 594b, 600a, 632a, 634b, 637a, 638a, 639a. His conviction that the Humble Petition and Advice entrenched upon the sovereignty of the people had apparently matured into opposition to the protectorate as a whole, and during the protracted debate on the bill of recognition (the bill confirming Richard Cromwell as lord protector), which took up most of February, he worked with Lambert and the Commonwealthsmen (republican MPs) in their efforts to impede its progress.110Infra, ‘John Lambert’; Burton’s Diary, iii. 231, 274, 283, 540, 577; iv. 290; TSP vii. 605; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 122. He was particularly vocal in his condemnation of the Cromwellian Other House, which he criticised as the tool of government by a single person.111Burton’s Diary, iii. 31, 147-8, 217, 336; iv. 31. Captain Thomas Lilburne* was said to have informed his army friends in Scotland that Baynes had ‘declared exceedingly against a House of Lords … and ... that one or more knights in the House of Commons was [sic] worth all the lords of the other House’.112Add. 21425, ff. 21, 26.

Baynes’s vehemency against the Other House was matched by his desire to bound Richard Cromwell’s powers and to deny him any negative voice in the legislative process.113Burton’s Diary, iii. 217, 321, 335-6, 367. He declared frankly that he was not prepared to trust either the protector or the Other House with control of the militia and the public revenue.114Burton’s Diary, iii. 217, 451, 455; iv. 31. He also questioned whether Richard should be acknowledged a hereditary ruler.115Burton’s Diary, iii. 215-16. Baynes based his criticism of the bill of recognition and the Other House upon what he regarded as the total invalidity of the Humble Petition and Advice. As he declared on 11 February 1659:

The Petition and Advice, which is his [the protector’s] foundation, wants a foundation itself. It was brought in irregularly, against the orders of the House, to alter the government. It was read afterwards in parts (there was no committee) and passed in parts and never read the third time ... There are many other defects in the formality of passing that law.116Burton’s Diary, iii. 216.

In arguing against the Other House and rule by a single person, Baynes took a distinctly Harringtonian line, repeatedly emphasising that property was the only sure and legitimate foundation of political power:

The constitution of king, Lords and Commons can never be suitable to this nation as now constituted ... The people were too hard for the king in property and then in arms ... We must either lay the foundation [of government] in property, or else it will not stand. Property, generally, is now with the people; the government, therefore, must be there ... If you make a single person, he must be a servant and not a lord ... If you can find a House of Lords to balance property, do it. Else, let a senate be chosen by the election of the people.117Burton’s Diary, iii. 147-8, 217, 335-6.

Baynes also joined the commonwealthsmen in questioning the right to sit of the Scottish and Irish Members, who were regarded by the republican interest as mere Cromwellian placemen.118Burton’s Diary, iv. 123-4, 225.

Baynes’s hostility to the protectorate was apparent across a range of issues. He favoured tough measures against the agents of Cromwellian ‘tyranny’, supporting calls for the cashiering of Major-general William Boteler*, following a report from the committee of grievances on 12 April that he had abused his authority as an officer.119Burton’s Diary, iv. 404; CJ vii. 637a. Baynes also endorsed calls for the release of the trenchantly repubclican officer Colonel Robert Overton, who had been imprisoned for disaffection to the protectorate, and defended the republican MP Henry Neville against charges of atheism and blasphemy.120Burton’s Diary, iii. 45, 304; iv. 153. He ‘managed’ the case in the committee of privileges for another radical officer imprisoned under the protectorate, Colonel Nathaniel Rich*, who had been involved in a double return for the borough of Southwark.121Supra, ‘Southwark’; Burton’s Diary, iv. 467. But perhaps the clearest demonstration of Baynes’s adherence to the anti-protectoral interest was his tellership with Overton’s close friend and fellow republican officer Matthew Alured – he, too, had been imprisoned for defying Protector Oliver – in a division on 7 March concerning the disputed election at Malton.122Supra, ‘Matthew Alured’; CJ vii. 611a; Burton’s Diary, iv. 42, 46. Baynes and Alured were tellers against confirming a recommendation from the committee of privilege for upholding the return of the pro-Cromwellians, and possibly crypto-royalist, Philip Howard* and George Marwood* over that of Colonel Robert Lilburne* and his fellow republican, Luke Robinson*. In the event, Baynes and Alured lost the division by 142 votes to 173. This was a serious defeat for the republican opponents of the Cromwellian regime and probably heightened the army’s fears that Parliament was dominated by its enemies – an important factor in its decision to bring down the protectorate. Baynes’s last recorded speech in the House was on 18 April in support of the army. ‘Your army is a main ingredient in your government. Lose that and you lose all’. His speech was greeted with approval by the republican grandee, Sir Arthur Hesilrige.123Burton’s Diary, iv. 450.

It seems likely that Baynes welcomed the army’s overthrow of the protectorate on 21 April 1659, although whether he was as enthusiastic about its subsequent restoration of the Rump is not clear. He was certainly trusted by the new regime and was quickly restored to his captaincy in Lambert’s regiment and was appointed a commissioner for bringing in the arrears of revenue due to the commonwealth. In September, he would be named as a commissioner for customs and excise.124CJ vii. 667a, 668b, 680b, 787a; CUST109/14, f. 20; Add. 21425, ff. 66, 76, 115; A. and O. ii. 1276-7, 1350. His interest also seems to have improved at Leeds, where it was reported that the clothiers and all his friends looked upon him and Lambert as ‘the only means under God to ease them of the tyranny and oppression’ of the corporation’.125Add. 21425, f. 68. His fate rested upon that of Lambert, however, and, following the latter’s defeat by General George Monck* late in 1659, he was removed from his captaincy.126Add. 21425, ff. 193, 194; HMC Portland, i. 695. Shortly after the re-admission of the secluded Members to the House on 21 February 1660, Baynes and most of his fellow commissioners for customs and excise and for bringing in arrears of revenue were discharged from office and replaced by less radical men.127CJ vii. 851a, 853b. He was penalised further in April 1660 following Lambert’s escape from the Tower, when the council of state had his house searched and then ordered his imprisonment on suspicion of having harboured the general and his suspected accomplices – including, it was reported, William Goffe* and Edward Whalley*.128CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 417, 574; Parliamentary Intelligencer no. 17 (16-23 Apr. 1660), 261 (E.183.5). Baynes remained a prisoner until at least mid-May.129Add. 21425, ff. 215, 216, 218.

Yet despite his close links with Lambert and the army republicans, Baynes seems to have emerged from the Restoration relatively unscathed. Although he was required to relinquish the crown and church lands he had purchased during the interregnum, he managed to retain, on leasehold, what seems to have been a substantial amount of land at Holdenby.130Add. 21425, ff. 238, 247, 248, 259, 266. Late in 1660 he was granted a royal pardon ‘according to the usual form’.131C231/7, p. 57. In addition, he was appointed crown receiver of the arrears of the fee farm rents for the manor of Leeds, at a yearly profit of £185.132CRES6/1, p. 205. During the 1660s, he seems to have divided his time between his Northamptonshire residence at Teeton, near Holdenby, and the capital, where he had ‘many occasions to come’.133Add. 21425, ff. 263, 264, 269, 274, 278; W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), Baynes mss, B/22. In 1665, he was sued in king’s bench by the crown for the household goods he had sold when Holdenby House had been demolished.134KB27/1873, rot. 597; Hargrave 65, ff. 37v-38; A. Barclay, ‘Recovering Charles I’s art collection: some implications of the 1660 Act of Indemnity and Oblivion’, HR lxxxviii. 638. He was said to have been in financial difficulty during the mid-1660s, and his fortunes took a further turn for the worse in the autumn of 1666, when he was imprisoned in the Tower on (the probably groundless) suspicion of ‘treasonable practices’.135C6/206/50; PC2/59, p. 610; CSP Dom. 1665-6, p. 544; 1666-7, pp. 137, 235, 531. He remained in the Tower until at least March 1667.136Add. 21427, f. 299.

Baynes died on or about 5 January 1671.137C6/206/50. His place of burial is not known. In his will, in which he described himself of Teeton, he bequeathed houses, closes, coalpits and a ‘considerable colliery’ in Leeds parish to his wife and ten surviving children.138PROB11/336, f. 158. He had already settled some of his estate in trust for his family.139C6/206/50; W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), Baynes mss, B/16, B/22. According to one of his trustees, he died ‘seized of divers lands and tenements of a good yearly value and possessed of divers leases, goods and chattels of a great value’.140C10/175/113. Baynes was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.